


Two Jewels, Antique Setting

by Bohemienne



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Children of Characters, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Ferdibert Week 2019, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:00:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bohemienne/pseuds/Bohemienne
Summary: Prime Minister von Aegir is reunited with his husband of thirty years after a lengthy diplomatic trip abroad. Featuring illustrations by@DecasArtand@NoxDrawsTrash!Ferdibert Week 2019 Day 2:Domestic
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 35
Kudos: 394
Collections: Ferdibert Ship Week 2019





	Two Jewels, Antique Setting

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to Ferdibert Week 2019! You can find my other Ferdibert Week works here:
> 
>   *   
>  [**Day 1: Fairytale** with @GraceDrawsStuff](https://twitter.com/gracedrawsstuff/status/1201171606741098496)  
> 
> 

> 
> This fic features preexisting artwork from [@NoxDrawsTrash](http://twitter.com/NoxDrawsTrash) and new illustrations from [@DecasArt](http://twitter.com/DecasArt)!

Prime Minister von Aegir walks the last few blocks on foot, so he can focus his full attention on the sight of his manor as he rounds the corner. Two months away has changed the trees lining the fence from bushy green to sparse orange and red, and the ivy isn’t as trim as he likes to keep it, but he couldn’t be more relieved at the sight.

It’s home— _his_ home. Not the old Aegir townhome, given over to his oldest sister; not the former Vestra estate they gleefully dismantled for scrap. Like so many things he’s dedicated his life to, this manor was built from the ashes of the old order, and yet thirty years since the war’s end, it has become a fixture unto itself.

What a strange and vexing process, that relentless march of time. Just when he thinks he’s gotten his bearings, he looks up and the years have rushed past him.

The iron garden gate creaks as he slips inside; the thud of his bootheels on the slate path is a warm melody he hasn’t heard in all too long. Their war, Her Majesty’s renaissance, it was never about complacency—but Ferdinand is a creature of comforts, and he will take these small comforts where he can.

The door unlocks, and he steps into the dim grand foyer of the Vestra-Aegir Manor.

That much he certainly couldn’t have foreseen back when this war began. Sharing his life with the strange shadow who haunted the halls of the Imperial Palace throughout his childhood, and tormented him so much at the Officers’ Academy. Who brought about Her Majesty’s new age in secret, in silence, surprising them all. He’d never thought he could trust a man like that, much less love him. Yet once he grasped the solid form beneath that darkness, he found a man whose cunning and loyalty and ambition were matched only by the vastness of his heart.

And now—the mere sight of their wedding portrait hanging in the great hall sets a fresh flutter in Ferdinand’s chest. They hardly even look like the same men now, but there’s no disguising that shrewdness in Hubert’s gaze and possessiveness in his grasp, the overwhelmed but pleased smile on his own lips—and their fingers bare, grasping for each other, new rings shiny and on display. He hopes those giddy young men are pleased by the thirty years of life they’ve witnessed over from that wall.

_art by[@NoxDrawsTrash](http://twitter.com/NoxDrawsTrash)_

But there’s an unsettling emptiness to the house, too—one he’d tried to forget about while he was away. After twenty-six years of constant noise from first one and eventually four children, their youngest finally left home shortly before he departed for his journey. Now, the echoing silence has taken on a strange weight.

He misses the sounds of Henri, the eldest at twenty-six, who’d practice violin at all hours, or sprawling his long limbs across every available surface in the house while he read. He’s married himself now, sharing a townhouse with his husband in Enbarr’s artistic district full of coffeehouses and performance halls.

Then there were the twins, Valentin and Victoria, as different as—well, as he and their father had been, once. Valentin is bombastic and outgoing in an all-too-familiar way that Ferdinand can’t help but both cringe at and admire; he’s been apprenticing with the city council when he isn’t out playing polo, rugby, or crew, or engaging in one of his countless disastrous love affairs. Meanwhile, Victoria is solemn and sinister, single-minded in her pursuit of the sorcerous engineering arts. She sat them both down once a few years ago and informed them she had no desire to share her life with _anyone_ , thank you very much.

And then there’s Frederica, the baby, whose fresh absence Ferdinand feels most acutely. Her zeal for adventure novels and her fencing lessons somehow funneled into a desire to set out into the world to become some grand romantic mercenary, which terrifies Ferdinand but seems to amuse her father to no end. _She’s more like her daddy than you want to admit,_ he teases Ferdinand regularly, and the worst part is how right he is.

Soon—tomorrow, even—he’ll pay a visit to each of them. But right now, there’s only one soul in the world he longs to see.

Somewhere in the depths of the manor, a door opens.

Ferdinand lifts his head. They only employ the bare minimum of servants to keep them sane through their long working hours and the estate from crumbling, and even that staff is paid generously, with minimal tasks. Chances are, if someone is stirring in the manor at this hour—

And then at last his husband emerges from the direction of the kitchens, his usually serious face wide and eager.

“Darling,” Hubert breathes.

Middle age has been kind to Hubert, Ferdinand thinks—his hair only even handsomer for the streaks of gray at his temples and the goatee he’s maintained for the past decade or so. He is dressed down to his waistcoat, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, the blackened scars of his magic-mangled hands visible along his bare hands and forearms, overlaid further with stains of ink.

Ferdinand is struck by the sight of those bare hands—how funny to think there used to be a time when they both felt scandalized to be before the other without their gloves. When they were scandalized to be touching at all, their courtship an agonizingly slow dance of sleeves brushing, tea and coffee sipped over a bass line of yearning, and careful, trembling kisses in the palace gardens with long pauses between them to catch their breaths.

Yet through it all, and the thirty years of marriage since—this tug in Ferdinand’s chest has remained. This urgent wish to lace those battered hands in his own and kiss them until sensation permeates the darkness. Ferdinand feels—more solid, somehow, at the sight of him. As though he is finally rooted after months adrift.

They regard each other, the feet between them wide as the continent that separated them, Ferdinand’s breath lodged anxious in his throat. Had he become so used to the emptiness at his side and in his arms? Has he forgotten how to hold, how to love—

And then Hubert reaches for him, callused, withered fingers clutching his face with all the tenderness of untarnished youth. Their foreheads rest together with the slightest stoop to Hubert’s back.

“Darling,” he says once more.

Ferdinand seals the word to Hubert’s lips with a kiss, tentative at first, reacclimating to him like stepping back onto dry land. The bristles of their mustaches poking together—oh, how he’d forgotten the feel of that. But it’s worth it, more than worth it, for his husband’s shaky sigh and slide of hands into Ferdinand’s long hair.

And then they are opening their mouths, hungrier now—and Ferdinand is hungry as though he hasn’t known sleep or food for months, as if Hubert alone can quench his parched lips, and if it’s a little embarrassing to be kissing like newlyweds, tongues avid and moans unchecked, then who is around to judge them, in this home they’ve built and fortified with their love for the past thirty years?

Their mouths part at last with embarrassed laughter, but their arms stay intertwined, their foreheads joined, communing. “Forgive me,” Hubert says, his silky voice snagged a little with age, but it still builds a fire in Ferdinand’s belly. “I just missed you, is all.”

Ferdinand rubs his nose against Hubert’s. “I missed you, too.”

All throughout his travels, he was possessed, day in and out, with thoughts he wished he could share with his husband; it weighed on him to keep them unspoken, because who but Hubert could appreciate them in full? But now, those cool hands on his face, that warm breath teasing his lips, he can’t remember a damned one of them.

And for all their conversations, their arguments, their banter, their deliberations and debates and pleas whispered, fervent, in each other’s ears—they no longer really need words between them at all.

Hubert’s hands slip down to grip Ferdinand by his shoulders, shaking loose the road dust from his traveling jacket. “Oh, dear.” Hubert smiles, straightening back up. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

* * *

His husband’s hands undressing him are like the melody of a hymn he hasn’t sang in far too long: he knows the shape of them, if not all the words. The way blackened nails slip buttons loose and rough fingertips shimmy trousers down his thighs. It took years for Hubert, so unused to physical affection, to grow fully accustomed to Ferdinand’s presence—Ferdinand, who craved constant touch, needy as he’d been, and desperate for reassurance. But he came to love giving him the gentle touches Ferdinand craved—a gloved hand tapped under his elbow at a meeting, or fingers resting on his thigh at state dinners. In private, Ferdinand would bury his face in Hubert’s shoulder and neck, or wrap around him in their sleep, and year by year, Hubert came to treat him much the same.

He never once scolded him for clinging to him like a barnacle, or pushed him away. He saw Ferdinand’s love for what it was: unshakable and bound.

“There you are.” Hubert smiles approvingly as he helps Ferdinand step, unclothed now, into the clawfoot tub. “You poor dear,” he says, teasing. “I don’t know how you managed without a valet around to dress you. Or me.”

“Mostly you.” Ferdinand groans as he sinks into the just-right water and stretches out his toes at the far end of the tub. “Next time I’ll have to smuggle you in my luggage.”

“You know I’d have accompanied you if it had been remotely possible.” Hubert reaches across him and grabs the pitcher in the recess on the wall; dunks it into the water, then gently pours the suds over Ferdinand’s chest, wetting the coppery hairs there. A fine layer of grit from the dusty road is forming on the surface of the bath already, but it feels so nice just to soak—and to have his husband here at his side.

“You haven’t asked after the negotiations,” Ferdinand says.

Hubert’s nose nuzzles against Ferdinand’s temple, and Ferdinand sighs. “I knew you couldn’t resist telling me for long.”

Ferdinand smiles; leans back and closes his eyes. “They agreed to all my terms save one. All in all, a great success.”

“As if there was any doubt.” Hubert trails the back of gnarled fingers against Ferdinand’s cheek. Opening his eyes, Ferdinand watches him, those shrewd eyes further ringed with darkness and exhaustion than they once were, but as keen as ever. “Woe betide anyone who underestimates my husband.”

Ferdinand grins—how he’s missed hearing those two little words. “All yours,” he breathes. “And how fares my husband at the palace?”

“Oh, the usual.” Hubert picks up the bath sponge to help him scrub. “Some county clerk abusing his power who had to be shown the error of his ways. Spies in Dagda to wrangle. Her Majesty’s tea parties to coordinate.”

“Which I’m sure you coordinated within an inch of their lives,” Ferdinand teases. “I think she hates it even more than we do when we’re apart.”

Hubert winces. “She did give me something of an earful that time you had to travel to Almyra for a month just after Henri left home—do you remember that?”

“Something about threatening to call the imperial physician to surgically remove you from her backside if you didn’t find a new hobby in my absence?”

“Yes. Something like that.” Hubert wipes at Ferdinand’s face, then lets his hand linger on his cheek. “Henri’s doing well, by the way. They have discovered the joys of dealing with a mouse infestation.”

“Maybe we can get them a cat for their first anniversary. And the twins?”

“Victoria’s doing her best not to acknowledge my presence in the engineering corps. Valentin, regrettably, has ended things with that dramaturge he was seeing.” Hubert smiles sadly. “I almost liked that one.”

“I always like the ones who don’t flinch when you invite them to view your collection of interrogator’s knives,” Ferdinand says.

Hubert lifts one eyebrow. “You didn’t flinch, either.”

“I did not flinch from a lot of things about you.”

They regard each other for a long moment. He almost has to laugh, to think what a strange young man Hubert had been. At once supremely confident in his skills as an assassin and administrator—proud, even, of the darkness he bore—yet pitifully shy and uncertain of himself when Ferdinand’s affections turned toward him. That darkness was something they learned to carry between them, even as the soft and loving man he became toward Ferdinand grew and grew.

Ferdinand beckons Hubert closer. “C’mere, you.”

Hubert leans over the lip of the tub—just in time for Ferdinand to squirt a jet of water up through his fist.

[ ](http://twitter.com/DecasArt)

Hubert is stunned for a moment, looking all too much like an angry cat. Then he dives forward, grabbing Ferdinand’s face, and pulls him into a kiss. Ferdinand squirms pleasantly, lifting up toward him with a slosh of bath water over the tub.

[ ](http://twitter.com/DecasArt)

“Damn,” Hubert says, none too concerned-sounding, as the front of his vest and trousers get drenched in the deluge.

“A pity. Might as well crawl in with me, now.” Ferdinand keeps his hand cupped around Hubert’s head.

Hubert gently peels the hand away and kisses it before setting it back down on the edge of the tub. He stands, and starts to peel off his drenched clothes. “Or you could just hurry up.”

“So sorry, Minister. I did not know I had exceeded my allocation of fun for the day.”

Hubert grins over his shoulder as he heads for the door. “Oh, I might be persuaded to make a concession.”

“Accepting bribes now? Scandalous.”

Ferdinand plunges under the water as Hubert flings his tie at him.

* * *

Hubert is only wearing his smallclothes when Ferdinand steps out of the tub, moving forward to quickly wrap Ferdinand up in an oversized towel. And to be held like this—his skin warm and dewy, his husband’s arms tight around him, within the comforting walls they’ve built, a home fortified with thirty years of love and devotion—

He can’t help the tears that sneak from his eyes, even as he grins like mad.

“Sweetheart. There’s no need for that.” Hubert nudges Ferdinand’s face up toward his and kisses the corner of each eye. “You’re here now.”

“It is all I ever want.”

Hubert hesitates; more than once the topic has wafted up around them like steam from a teacup. _Retirement._ Hubert pledged his service to the emperor until the day he dies, but she’s the last person in the world who would hold him to that. For Ferdinand, the current exhaustion and road-weariness he feels is still nothing compared to the sheer panic that consumes him at the thought of having no work to fill his days.

His father, and his father, and his father—they were all prime ministers until death. But this is a new age, with talk of elements of leadership increasingly being chosen by those they mean to represent, and while Ferdinand could never bring himself to step down on his own, maybe, just maybe, if the choice was made for him, it might come with some sense of relief—

“There will always be something for you to occupy yourself with,” Hubert says. Breaks up his frantic thoughts with a soft kiss to the tip of his nose. “Whatever you choose, I’ll support you.”

“There is no need to choose just yet.” Ferdinand shakes his head. “Right now I just want . . .”

He loops his arms around Hubert’s neck, and pushes his lips to Hubert’s.

Hubert sighs softly, grip tightening around Ferdinand; Ferdinand lets his mouth be opened, lets lazy tongues wrap together, lets Hubert’s quick, sharp teeth nip him fully awake. And though they’ve done this a thousand times, Ferdinand’s body still responds to the merest hint of what might come next as he nudges them hip to hip.

“Mm. There you are.” Hubert grins, wicked. “Insatiable as ever.”

Ferdinand brushes the back of his fingers against Hubert’s cheek. “You did say all the children were out of the house . . . ?”

Hubert laughs gently, the air teasing Ferdinand’s lips. “No children,” he confirms. “Remind me how we ended up with four, again?”

“Because you never have learned how to tell me no.”

“How right you are.”

Hubert guides him down onto the bed, unwrapping the towel like a present, and crawls above him to kiss every bit of Ferdinand he can reach. Ferdinand sighs and lets himself be lavished upon. They still have their more adventurous episodes, but mostly Ferdinand craves nothing more than the warmth of his husband, any way he can claim it.

“How I’ve missed this,” Hubert murmurs at his ear, teasing one hand down Ferdinand’s stomach—the softness that now overlays his sturdy cavalier’s build. “All of you.”

Ferdinand shimmies the smallclothes off of Hubert’s slender hips. “As did I.”

Hubert nips, leisurely, at his neck, then rises up onto his knees to reach for the nightstand. “Something from the book, darling?”

Ferdinand catches his hand to pull it back; kisses dry nails, charred skin, inky palms. At least Hubert has found a way to stabilize the damage. Without a war to wage, it hasn’t gotten considerably _worse_ in some time. But the magic still takes its toll.

“Not tonight, I think. I just want you.”

He fights the urge to laugh, suddenly, recalling the time a fifteen-year old Victoria had invited an entire dinner party (which included the emperor and her wife) to tour her fathers’, and here she used finger quotes for emphasis, “dungeon.” _Just be careful not to touch anything._

Ferdinand was sure his face was as red as his wine when he said, _Now, darling, that is where your father does his_ important magical research—

_Oh, please, Daddy,_ she’d replied. _The whole neighborhood can hear you when you’re in there._

Tonight, though, all he needs is his husband atop him, lips drowsily seeking lips, a hand around them both as they gently kiss and stroke and sigh together. All he needs is the curtained windows turning from burnished gold to dusty indigo as he runs his fingers through salt-and-pepper hair and grips tight as they drink each other’s quiet moans.

All he needs is Hubert collapsing into his arms, his wiry body cushioned against Ferdinand’s, and they fit together as they always have: all their edges aligning just right to make a whole.

“I love you,” Hubert murmurs, eyes lidding, his breath already teetering on the edge of sleep.

Ferdinand kisses his forehead and leaves his lips there. “I love you, too.”

So really, he can’t even be mad at the sudden clanging of the manor’s front doorbell.

They look at each other with a weary shared sigh. “Your turn,” Hubert says, and Ferdinand shoves up onto his elbows with a groan. Goddess, but his joints ache more than they used to, even though he’s kept up his exercise. He throws on a silken dressing robe and slides a bedroom window open to peer down at the porch.

“Ministers?” It’s a palace page, pacing anxiously on their porch as he answers Ferdinand at the window. “My apologies, I know you’ve just returned, but your presence is requested—”

Ferdinand and Hubert meet each other’s eyes and laugh, because what else is there to do? “Just a minute,” Ferdinand calls from the window. “We’ll be down shortly.”

He holds his hand out to Hubert to help pry him out of bed. “Never a moment’s rest.”

“A few moments’ rest, sometimes.” Hubert kisses their joined hands. “At least you’re back with me.”

Ferdinand’s chest swells with warmth at that as they bustle around each other with practiced ease, dressing, gathering what they’ll need. Because whatever more the night will bring for them, at least they’ll face it together. Just as they’ve conquered everything.

**Author's Note:**

> [@Bohemienne6](http://twitter.com/Bohemienne6)
> 
> [@DecasArt](http://twitter.com/DecasArt)


End file.
